Quotes from Joan London

He flicked through the yellowed rough-cut pages and breathed its musty smell. It filled him with a strange excitement, as if he'd caught a whiff of ancient, buried cities.

She limped, unaided around the house, like a bird with its wing broken. Tame, because it couldn't fly away. All her time was taken up with managing herself, working out new ways to do things. Being a different person in the world.

I have to find myself A place where I can breathe. That's where poetry lives In the oldest part of us.

Something had been taken away from him in the war, against his will, and he would never be the same. Years in labour camps, in mountains, in salt mines: only solitude was natural to him now. Some part of him was terminally tired. He was beyond intimacy. The pretence at normality, the weight of the past, the unreality of the days here had exhausted him.

And in this matter, Gold, he'd said, rolling his eyes towards Frank, we have had an early advantage.

the large black birds swirling and dispersing over

Sneakiness was a form of privacy and privacy here was the first loss.

city, but still it lingered, like a tune or an aroma, set in motion whenever

You are the light that swirls around me, Darkness lies over the desert.

You are the first inhabitant I meet In this new country.

Your bed was empty today When I looked for you Why?

Just when I thought I'd never find you You appear.

You are going to get strong! You are going to walk!" "Mama, please!" "You want to know why? They take the weak ones first." Everything was always about the war.

All those I live with are unseen.

Once you work the soil, you belong to it. For so long now he had passed over the surface of the earth like wind over a desert, like shifting sand.